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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1464927/posts

Is Chicago in the crosshairs?"
Chicago Tribune ^ | August 16, 2005 | Graham Allison

Posted on 08/17/2005 1:18:55 AM PDT by RWR8189

Many Americans consider the idea of a nuclear bomb exploding in an American city to be Hollywood science fiction, but FBI warnings that terrorists may be planning an attack on Chicago are hitting close to home and are eerily familiar.

One month after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, a CIA agent code-named "Dragonfire" reported that Al Qaeda had acquired a small nuclear bomb from the former Soviet arsenal and had brought it to New York City.

Vice President Dick Cheney and hundreds of other government officials evacuated Washington for a then-undisclosed location. President Bush dispatched nuclear experts to search for signs of radiation.

Mercifully, Dragonfire's report was a false alarm.

The truth, however, is that the U.S. government had no grounds to dismiss the warning. While not likely, it is possible that Al Qaeda is hiding nuclear bombs in one or several American cities today. So who can say that the trucks the FBI warned about might not contain weapons of mass destruction?

Smuggling a nuclear weapon into Chicago is not as improbable as it seems.

The highly enriched uranium needed to build a simple nuclear weapon is smaller than a football. It could be smuggled through American borders and into the metropolis the way illegal drugs come into the city every day: in uninspected cargo containers delivered by ships and trains, contraband smuggled over the Canadian-American border, or innumerable other ways.

Why might Al Qaeda aspire to such a difficult, deadly assault? Bin Laden has challenged the Al Qaeda movement to trump Sept. 11. That calls for attacks more spectacular than hijacking jumbo jets to crash into trophy buildings. The ultimate terrorist spectacle would be an American city enveloped by a nuclear mushroom cloud.

In May 2003 Osama bin Laden

(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...